Yasser Ashraf Gandomi is a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering and is a member of the Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Laboratory. Gandomi’s advisor is Dr. Matthew Mench and his work is primarily focused on developing a model for all-vanadium redox flow batteries. His work also includes designing in-situ diagnostics for all-vanadium redox flow batteries. Gandomi is the student chapter president of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).

Alexander (Alex) Hashemian is a M.S. student in mechanical engineering and works in the heat transfer research group with Dr. Majid Keyhani, his advisor, and Dr. Jay Frankel. He has been working in this research group since his third year as an undergraduate in the MABE department. Hashemian’s work deals with the development of an in-situ thermal characterization method of specialized thermocouples for the purpose of obtaining accurate transient temperature data from the installed sensor as well as low fluid velocity measurements, provided the sensor is in a fluid domain. The results of his research has led to a patent application, which has recently been submitted to the University Research Foundation.

Andrew Henry is a M.S. student in mechanical engineering and worked as an intern for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Battery Manufacturing Facility. While working in the lab, Henry worked on using different materials as the anode and cathode of batteries and analyzing the effect moisture has on batteries to increase energy density for electric vehicles.

Misagh Mansouri Boroujeni is a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering and works as a Graduate Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr. Jeffrey Reinbolt. Mansouri’s work seeks to develop an integrated research foundation to understand human balance and movement control through a design, control, and simulation environment to uncover the principles that govern the coordination of muscles during normal and abnormal movement. He recently has his work titled “A platform for dynamic simulation and control of movement based on OpenSim and MATLAB” published at in the Journal of Biomechanics. Mansouri is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society of Biomechanics, and the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Graham Taylor is a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering and works in the Bioinspired Materials and Transduction Laboratory under the guidance of his advisor, Dr. Andrew Sarles. Taylor’s research is aimed at developing novel devices and smart materials that utilize active biomolecules including lipids and proteins as the building blocks. Taylor has presented twice at the ASME SMASIS (Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures, and Intelligent Systems 2012-13) conference for separate projects underway in the lab. The current focus of his research is yielding new information regarding membrane interactions of amyloid beta (1-40), a protein found in the bloodstream and in amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s. Taylor’s future research goals include advancing bilayer based constructs from the lab to point of care therapies while probing, understanding, and applying biomedical engineering principles to basic sciences of biochemistry and molecular biology.

Congratulations to these students on their acceptance into Phi Kappa Phi!